MANFREDO KRAEMER & THE RARE FRUITS COUNCIL

Hortus Musicus: XVII century chamber music for violin, bass viol and organ

 

 

Saturday 18 August at 7 pm, Kretinga Franciscan Church

The Rare Fruits Council:

Manfred Kraemer, violin

Juan Manuel Quintana, bass viol

Luca Guglielmi, organ

 

 

The term baroque, deriving from the Portuguese barocco, means an irregular pearl and usually, a small one. But it is also a transhistorical and recurrent art form, an opposite modality to the classicism: if all classicism is rational, masculine and Apollonian, the baroque is irrational, feminine and Dionysian.

 

To gather together around a little organ pearl of Kretinga, we decided to “break the bread” sharing pieces and composers of similar profile. They do not belong to the mainstream of baroque composers, they are all exponents of a stylistic period of the second half of the XVII century, particularly audacious and unconstrained.

 

Buxtehude and Pachelbel were, the first from North and the second from South Germany, the most outstanding organ players of the generation before Johann Sebastian Bach. Pachelbel was, until recently, unfairly known as the composer of only one piece, his famous Canon. Meanwhile Buxtehude, nowadays an unavoidable composer, was for a long time better known by the anecdote where Bach walked one week to Lübeck “to comprehend one thing and another about his art.

 

Kroměříž castle in the present Czech Republic is the location for the richest XVIIth century music collections. During his reign the prince bishop Carl Liechtenstein-Castelkorn has gathered more than 1000 compositions of known and unknown composers, and in many cases it is the only existing source about them.

 

Composers such as Antonio Bertali or Augustinus Kertzinger would be practically unknown if not this collection. Bertali, born in Verona, was a musician in the Vienna court under Ferdinand II, and then the kapellmeister until his death in 1669. Biographic information about Kertzinger is extraordinarily poor. We know only that he was the kapellmeister in the San Vito Cathedral in Prague, and then in the San Esteban Cathedral in Vienna.

 

The biography of Philipp Friedrich Boeddecker is also not exhaustive, besides the fact that he was Kapellmeister in Stuttgart and in Strasburg we do not know much. He is better known by an extensive and sour dispute with his colleague and rival Samuel Capricornus, in which both were accusing each other of compositional mistakes.

 

William Lawes is considered a link between Dowland and Purcell. He was dead premature- and tragically during the Civil War, and his music is known by the juxtaposition, or maybe more properly, the coexistence of the bizarre, a sophisticated counterpoint and for his simplicity. A perfect example of little pearl, shiny, irregular, surprising: an authentic “barocco”.

 

 

Manfredo Kraemer

Programme

 

 

William Lawes (1602–1645) Fantazia  in D major 
For violin, bass viol and organ

                                                         

Antonio Bertali (1605–1669) Sonata a due in d minor   
For violin, bass viol and continuo

 

Dietrich Buxtehude (1637–1707) Praeludium in g minor BuxWV 163

For organ

 

Augustinus Kertzinger (? –1678) Sonatina in d minor
For bass viol and continuo

 

Philipp Friederich Boeddecker (1607–1683)  Sonata in d minor

Adagio/Allegro/Adagio/Allegro/Presto/Adagio/Alla Francese/Adagio   

For violin and continuo

        

Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706) Aria Sebaldina in g minor

For organ

 

Dietrich Buxtehude (1637–1707) Sonata op. 2 nº 3 in g minor

Vivace/ Lento-Allegro/ Lento-Andante-Grave-Gigue                   

For violin, bass viol and continuo

 

 

Manfredo Kraemer CV

The Rare Fruits Council CV